Category: Seek His will in your life

There are so many things which the Bible tells us about God and His love for us, and yet those bits of information aren’t enough. We seem to see some things about Him in the Bible but many of them actually take a great amount of faith in order for us to truly believe them. So…why don’t we believe these words considering they are the Word of God given to mankind?

I believe that we can’t understand the ideas and the word pictures about God because much of it is too fantastic for our minds to comprehend. I mean, a bush which is burning which doesn’t burn? A pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, parting the Red Sea so that Israel can cross on the dry ground, stopping the sun and the moon so that they can defeat their enemies when they are taking the Promised Land…all of these miraculous things are hard for modern man to believe without actually seeing them happen.

But consider that God cannot lie and if you have faith that God is truthful and just in all of His ways and these miracles make sense. He had to do some fantastic and wonderful things in order for the children of Israel to see and understand that He was taking care of them like He said He would. Today it is hard for me to understand how they could see these things and know that they happened and then turn away from worshipping God to worship idols. I just don’t get it.

I mean mortal man creates an idol out of molten silver or gold or wood and then he bows to it as if it was a god? It is a piece of metal or a carved piece of wood for goodness sake!! How can you possibly think that this thing is your god??!

The manna in the desert and the water which came from a rock to take care of the whole nation of Israel in the desert..just those two miracles would be enough to convince me!

Satan has a way of blinding us to God’s Truth and making our mind only see part of what is going on which brings us to the point of questioning God and His love for us. The church today is losing many to this phenomenon as we speak. While there are still people who are following Jesus and giving their hearts to Him, many more are walking out of the church and decide to never return.

God’s Word tells us that there will be a falling away of the faithful when the time is getting close to the Tribulation and it seems to be happening even now. So how much longer does the world have? I don’t know. I am not going to try to spin some lie about the time and the day because God doesn’t tell us, in His Word and we aren’t supposed to know ahead of the time anyway.

My point is this: we need to be telling people about Jesus and what He has done for us and for them. God loves us which is why Jesus came to pay our price of the sin debt which all of us have. We are not righteous enough to gain entrance into Heaven without Jesus and more people need to know that…and soon!

According to a poll done recently, of the nearly seventy percent of Christians who identify as Christians in the United States, only forty to fifty-nine percent of those attend church weekly. The article was on Faithwire so I am giving you the link to it if you want to read it. The United States came in as an outlier in the statistical realm because of our less involved Christians.

Why have participation and participants gone down in the past fifty years in America? I think it is because we have moved away from teaching our children about the moral absolutes found in the Bible. The schools are not allowed to teach it anymore, we don’t have a copy of the Ten Commandments in schools anymore for fear of offending someone. We have taken prayer, compulsory or voluntary, out of schools because of “political correctness” and trying not to offend people.

You know, Jesus offended His people while He was teaching and preaching! He would heal a person on the Sabbath or clear the porch of the Temple because of all the business transactions going on in a worship setting. He ate with sinners of all things! What a disgrace!

Really? Those who are sinners, which we all are by the way, need to hear the message of love and forgiveness more than the people who have been in the church for forty years. Many of those who have been in the church the longest are more like the Pharisees than the tax collector. They may not pray like he did, essentially telling God that He was lucky to have him as a teacher and that he wasn’t like these sinners or this tax collector, but they have ears which have grown calloused to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Many of them are spiritually deaf!

Then, when they go home their children and grandchildren don’t hear any more about Jesus and His teachings until next Sunday for about thirty minutes or so. If you aren’t teaching your children about Jesus during the week then they are listening to those at school about what exactly? Football, basketball, soccer, cheerleading, all of the religions of America which push Jesus into the locker room and shut the door.

Then during the fall there is hunting and more football and its an endless cycle every year. We are letting our children down into a well where Jesus is not and if they don’t find out about Him in time, they will drown in the world’s “religions” and may never darken the door of a church after they graduate. We have allowed this to happen to our children and to society in general. It isn’t some plot from some other religious group or some computer or console game! The blame for this lies directly in the laps of our families because we have failed in our duty to teach the next generation.

If we don’t turn this around and begin teaching our grandchildren and children now, in another generation there won’t be a church in America or the UK. Many are closing their doors each month as it is because no one attends and there is no money to keep the church open, let alone pay a pastor. We are living in the time just before the return of Jesus and the world is running away from belief in Him as fast as possible and it breaks my heart. I know it is breaking God’s heart too watching those that Jesus died for turn away and leave.

“Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Return to Me,” declares the LORD of hosts, “that I may return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. Zechariah 1:3

In all of creation, from one part of the cosmos to any other, God has placed so many wondrous sights and stars and galaxies until the pictures from our Hubble telescope astound and amaze even the scientists who study the stars. The picture below shows a star which is reported to be the largest ever found, yet we can’t see into other galaxies enough to know what might be there.

Since God created these magnificent stars, how much could He possibly do in your life or mine? If we believed His Word without doubting and our faith in Him was unwavering how much could we accomplish for His Kingdom and glory?

Today mankind denies God and His Word so much until we can scarcely believe in Him or His ability to heal sickness and disease. Let alone change our hearts into true believers! Why do we doubt Him? Because the world around us doubts Him and His message. We are taught in school about evolution and there is less evidence of that happening than there are proofs of the Bible’s truth which have been proven by archaeology!

God is the Creator and there is no other god or gods out there who can do the things which He has already done. You can choose to believe this or not because He gives us a choice but when His Spirit touches yours and you feel the weight of your sins and know that you don’t deserve eternity in Heaven, you will choose to give your life to Him and believe in Jesus for your salvation.

How do I know this? Because nearly every person who has been touched by Him and brought to the knowledge of their depravity and their lack of righteousness have given their hearts and their lives to Jesus. I said “nearly” because some people love the sinful condition that they live in more than they do the hope of eternity. It is those few who refuse to follow Jesus and they turn away from Him, even when they KNOW they need Him!

God loved humanity enough that He clothed Himself in humanity and lived with us in our infirmity, being rejected and slain on a cross for our sins, all of our sins, so that we could have an eternal relationship with Him. It is our choice to give our lives to Him, and when we feel the need for Him in our lives most of us ask Him to come in and change us into the people that He knows we can be! Not to make us better for our sake but for us to be better equipped to be useful for His Kingdom and glory!

God is perfect in all of His ways which is why we, who are sinful, cannot be in His presence without the blood of Jesus cleansing us from our sinful stains. We can’t do this on our own but by giving our heart and our lives to Jesus we can be better than we are and we are forgiven of our sins as well. This doesn’t make life easier, in fact, it may get a bit harder because Satan will attack us when we are doing those things which God has appointed us to do.

Each of us has a gift from God. Many Christians have more than one gift and these are given to us by God so that we can do the work which He wants us to do. Please don’t turn away from His call on your life when you feel His hand on you.

We all have them. One day you feel great and you can do anything. The next day…you feel as if you have fallen into one of the deepest pits that you could possibly find. Life is that way and it continues to be that way. Very likely it will keep on feeling that way or rather being that way for most of us until we are called home to Heaven with Jesus.

If you are NOT a Christian or your religion doesn’t believe in God or Jesus or any part of the Bible, then I can’t give you much encouragement about the way life is now or what is coming in the hereafter. Many Religions beyond Christianity don’t look at eternity the same way. Some look at death as a final chapter which ends the “book” and that is that.

Other Religions look at death as a doorway into eternity and it is your performance in this life which determines your reward or punishment in the next life. It isn’t your performance in this life which determines that even if it was a huge amount of money given or many good deeds done. The factor which has the determining and deciding vote is whether you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior or not in this life.

Yes, we all have ups and downs and sometimes they last much longer than we want them to but with your life in God’s hands and with Jesus as your Savior they can be managed and be far less stressful. Can they be managed without Him? Yes, you can manage them and get through them but those ups and downs and the stress that comes with them will be harder to bear on your own.

God didn’t intend for humanity to live in this condition of a fallen world with all of the problems and pitfalls that come with it, but we are in it and without Him to guide us and comfort us through it our lives will feel much worse than it should be. God is not a doting grandfather ready to dole out gifts and money at a whim nor is He a genie to call on when you want something. Thankfully many of the things which people ask for are not granted because He knows what is coming next week and the thing which you are asking for isn’t the right thing that you need.

Our time here is short compared to eternity and God, Who lives outside of time, can see next week or next year and He knows what is good for you and what will be the best for you in the long run. Your request for something like a Cadillac may not be granted because He can see that it wouldn’t be good for you and your family. A good Chevrolet with a few miles on it will be better in the long run and won’t cost nearly as much.

Be mature enough in Christ to thank God for the unanswered prayers which you didn’t get and thank Him for the answers which you did get which were so much better than what you had in mind!